Jakobinarina The First Crusade

Anomalies make the rules, so thank the lord that Jakobinarina are from Iceland. Renowned for being a one-town-in-one-country scene, old-school Scandinavia has long been shunted into the pigeonhole of impressionistic soundscapes - at least since the demise of The Sugarcubes. Hoardes have arrived from those shores - Bjork, Sigur Ros, Mugison, Mum, Gus Gus to name but a few - and they're all dreadfully similar. Not dreadful, but the consistency with which our northern Nordic neighbours create their precise fairytale symphonies, post-apocalyptic or otherwise, to the outsider may appear dull.

Jakobinarina create an avant-garde rock noise very much in the guise of Les Savy Fav or German compli-pop rockers The Robocop Kraus. This 5-piece do it very well, from distorted, slurred vocal delivery to crunching guitar lines, and it's far from the polished perfection seen from their native counterparts of the last decade or so. There is creativity and flexibility in their compositions, not afraid to juggle around with rhythms, structure or time signatures (see Hot Club de Paris), and this stretches into a rather testing portion of howling and tripping over syllables, evident in the playground taunting of 17.

It's rewarding, and like the afore-mentioned alt-rock, time-flipping comparisons, Jakobinarina at first seem fresh and innovative. The First Crusade, however, runs out of ideas fairly quickly. Sub 2-minute surf-rock dirge jam track End of Transmission No. 6 boldly declares its own lack of purpose aside from making up the numbers. Singles This Is An Advertisement and His Lyrics Are Disastrous are frenetic, crackly and exciting, but are largely misrepresentative of the rest of this debut mission.

There are enough signs to convince that Jakobinarina are thinking long and hard about what they're doing. It would appear that on this, their first outward jaunt, they're still making their minds up. Some messy live performances, in contradiction with the digital accuracy of the album, agree with this. The First Crusade is certainly not a bad first go, and gives the impression of a group blindly feeling their way, groping at their sound. Let's just hope that they try a bit more conquering the next time out.